Multi-touch patent continuation furthers multi-touch MacBook rumors

A recent continuation of a patent for a "wide touchpad" suggests that Apple is …

Rumors of a multi-touch Mac of some type (probably MacBook) have been floating around for a while now, due mostly to speculation and some patent filings. Steve Jobs seemed to quash the rumors when he described multi-touch as "a research project," but patent information is once again suggesting Apple is taking multi-touch a bit more seriously than that.

The recently-revealed filing is continuation of another patent application, both of which cover a "wide touchpad" on a laptop. As the name suggests, a wider touchpad would fill most of the space that is not currently used by the keyboard, and extend into the areas that are usually reserved for palm rests. The touchpad would essentially be a multi-touch interface, since it would be able to deal with multiple "contact patches." The illustrations show the wider touchpad being used with multiple fingers, as we've seen in multi-touch patents. You could even rest your palms on the interface without a problem, due to either a sensor or to the multi-touch interface detecting large contact patches at the same time as typing. And of course, the interface described could be used for clicking and dragging as well as for things like zooming and rotating images, just like any good multi-touch interface.

So are we getting multi-touch-capable Macs in the near future, or not? On one hand, Jobs didn't seem to suggest that multi-touch was coming to Macs anytime soon, but on the other hand it's likely that he was talking about desktop Macs like the iMac gaining multi-touch screens, rather than talking about smaller multi-touch interfaces. I think we'll see some type of wide multi-touch pad in the portable line first; I suspect MacBooks might even get it later this fall or early next year. I'm not sure if we'll see multi-touch displays for a while (at least a year, if not more), but either way, I'm excited to see what Apple comes up with after seeing all the cool patents for multi-touch.